Many businesses conduct a tremendous number of transactions, either sending or receiving materials, by mail. Although the containers for most of these mail transactions are merely envelopes, when someone has sent money, or a check, to the business in the envelope, it becomes very important to carefully ensure the emptying of each of these envelopes before they are discarded. One common method of emptying envelopes is to use a separate worker at each distinct stage of the process. Then, for instance, there would be one person to take the contents out of each envelope and then another person to inspect that the envelope was actually empty before it was discarded. As automation has advanced, various forms of machinery and mechanized process have taken over these laborious tasks, saving substantial time and money.
Machines that will very neatly and quickly slit open the tops of the envelopes are now commonly employed in businesses that must handle a great deal of mail. Also employed are machines that can open an envelope using suction cups on either side, and permit a visual inspection of the inside of each envelope. In a continuous feed arrangement, this type of machinery can process a tremendous number of envelopes in a relatively short period of time. However, as a final check to ensure that every check has been removed from its envelope before the envelopes are discarded, a back-up process known as "candling" is commonly employed. In the process of candling, each envelope is backlighted and visually inspected to ensure that it is empty. This process has been unnecessarily complicated, however, because the empty envelopes which must be inspected in this manner come off the feed line of the feeding conveyor to a waiting area for the candling operations. The envelopes coming off the feed line are typically inter-mixed and organized indiscriminately to such an extent that excessive time is required to organize them. The instant invention can easily be adapted to operate in conjunction with most commercial automatic openers. When the present invention is employed, all envelopes coming off the feed line of the feeding conveyor are formed into a neat, compact stack. In such a state, the envelopes are ready to be sequentially backlighted in a candling procedure, or any other similar process.